Plenty of people have switched to smartphones for their photography needs, but that doesn’t mean standalone cameras are dead just yet. Companies like Fuji, Canon and Olympus continue to make great DSLRs and interchangeable lens cameras for photograph…
You know those cartoons where the culprit was revealed to be Old Mr. Jones, the Caretaker, all along? It turns out that Sony’s been pulling the same trick concerning Fashion Entertainments’ e-paper watch. The story goes that the company wanted to cre…
The story of a brilliant man, Alan Turing, brought to suicide after being disgraced for being gay, the movie The Imitation Game reflects the sexual politics of a bygone era. In the midcentury, homosexuality was a disease that could be cured, and surprisingly in the US Bible belt, some believe that canard today. In this riveting if conventional movie, directed by Morten Tyldum from Graham Moore’s screenplay, Benedict Cumberbach plays Turing’s stunning mental power, bungling social grace, and naievete so compellingly, his demise at age 41 supplies an added irony to the history of his work in cracking the Nazi enigma code, using a machine that would be a forebear to the modern computer. But with all of his mind-bending intelligence, he lacked the resources to survive society’s ignorance.
Turing, unlike so many artistic men of his time, could not compromise. As the movie has it, a beautiful, smart woman, Joan Clarke, played with charm and her usual elan by Keira Knightley, would have been thrilled to marry him. He rescued her from a provincial life, and she might have returned the favor, given him the respectability to “pass.” As Paul Bowles, revealed, many artistic couples had such marriages. He was married to Jane Bowles; as a thoroughly devoted couple they often lived in separate hotel rooms, the better to fulfill their autonomous needs. Similarly, William Burroughs hooked up with Joan Vollmer and had a son with her. In love with Allen Ginsberg, and taken with other men, Burroughs travelled in search of yage with Lewis Marker. His sexual proclivities were maddening to Joan who indulged excessively in drink and drugs, famously contributing to her demise at his hand.
On many lists for Oscar honors, The Imitation Game splendidly portrays a heroic figure whose survival in post war society was simply not an option. The film further illustrates Alan Turing’s genius, in enabling programmable computers as we know them today.
A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.
Yesterday, prior to the Thanksgiving tummy-stuffing festivities, families and friends suited up in turkey garb and sneakers to run and walk local Turkey Trots around the country. In Buffalo, New York, for example, 14,000 runners braved the cold to run the city’s 119th annual race. Here at HuffPost Healthy Living, we love any tradition that gets people moving, so we asked our readers to share some of their best Turkey Trot shots. Below are a few trotters in all their glory. Share your loveliest Thanksgiving race photos with us with the hashtag #hptrot and we’ll share some of our favorites!
caprendoosehills via Instagram
ruthmphotography via Instagram
Beautiful morning for a #run. The #turkeytrot at Wash Park.
Watch #7newsNow and #cowx for your holiday #forecast pic.twitter.com/rqJDL2lBoO
— Bruce Wilson (@brucewilsonco) November 27, 2014
Thankful for Smiles #PiedmontTurkeyTrot #Thanksgiving #TurkeyTrot pic.twitter.com/9hRD65Mugg
— Jennifer A Fox (@jennfoxphoto) November 27, 2014
Michelle Guintu‘s upcoming exhibition is titled “Obsession” and it’s not hard to see why. The artists craft sharp-edged, multimedia shrines to classic hip hop artists, pop stars and cult film characters. For Guintu, nostalgia isn’t an ironic throwback but an intense fervor, and her artworks don’t just namedrop, they deify.
“I choose subjects that I’m super familiar with and have a lot to do with my childhood,” Guintu explained to The Huffington Post. “I guess I’m attracted to those things because I love those feelings I had growing up. Like when I listen to or watch something I get that deep heart-wrenching feeling sometimes; the kind of feeling where your eyes are blank because your eyeballs are nesting in that specific memory. Not to sound weird but sometimes it makes me wanna cry. I mean who doesn’t like that nostalgic feeling? I just feel it more than the average person.”
Lucky for us, Guintu has good taste. Her subjects include ’90s royalty like Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, TLC and Lil Kim. There are also some ’80s divas in the mix like Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. Her neon-tinged, pop-influenced style has been described as “kindercore” — yes, that’s part kindergarden, part hardcore for the uninitiated. We suppose if a badass art prodigy had a soft spot for N.W.A. this is what she’d create during craft time.
While a lot of Guintu’s works are painted on canvas, some are composed of a motley jumble of media, from fabric to paper mache, effectively blurring the line between art and craft. “I hope that people can see I’m not just a painter but I can work 2D and 3D and still receive that same nostalgic feeling,” said Guintu. “Also, that art doesn’t have to be large-scale or look expensive to be rad and legit.”
Get it girl.
Guintu’s upcoming exhibition “Obsession” runs from December 13th, 2014 until January 11th, 2015 at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles.
There is a very complex relationship between a woman and her hair. The protein filaments that sprout from our scalps somehow become emblematic of a woman’s identity, as if vital secrets were wrapped in every strand. We spend valuable time and money primping our coiffures as if they had the uncanny ability to transmit messages to strangers. And yet hairs on legs, tummies, pits and toes are often deemed grotesque and removed immediately.
Why is there such a strange code of conduct around a lady’s mane? That’s exactly what photographer Rebecca Drolen chose to explore in her surreal black-and-white series aptly dubbed “Hair Parts.”
“For many years, I have been a person who is recognizable by my long and somewhat wild hair,” Drolen explained to The Huffington Post. “My series, ‘Hair Pieces,’ began with some self-reflection and essentially laughing at myself as I wondered why or how I wrap up so much of my sense of identity in my looks, specifically my hair.”
“The first image was made when I found a braided ponytail that I had cut off years earlier with intention of donating. For whatever reason, I thought…I can use this! I fashioned the braid into a necktie, put on a short wig, and made the first image of the series, ‘Hair Tie.’ The image is one part liberating and two parts manic. I loved the notion of telling an ambiguous story with only the figure and their interaction with hair as the contents of the frame.”
Drolen’s photos provide an otherworldly glimpse at the peculiar role hair plays in our daily lives. Some photos examine what hair is acceptable (eyelashes), desirable (ponytail) and deplorable (armpits). Some resemble wonky fashion editorials while others feel like Cousin Itt’s head shots. The minimalist images capture the paradoxical nature of these peculiar fibers — at once attractive and repulsive, part of our bodies and yet not.
“I entered making this work with a sense of fascination that hair is both beautiful and repulsive in our culture. The fragile influence of context is its only distinction. We see long hair on a woman as a symbol of beauty and femininity, but as soon as the hair is cut or removed the body, we think of it as unsanitary and strange. Likewise, we seem to never have enough hair in the places we want it, and too much hair in the places that we don’t want it to be!”
The dreamlike images — at once playful and critical — capture the strange and contradictory roles hair plays in our lives. Think about them next time you whip out your razor.
This article was originally on Slate.
By David Rosenberg
Sian Davey, a mother of four, was pregnant with her youngest child when she was told that there was a good chance her daughter would be born with Down syndrome. While the decision to go through with the pregnancy was an easy one for Davey, it didn’t prepare her for what it would be like.
In addition to a fear that her daughter Alice would be treated unfairly in a society that she feels gives little or no value to people with Down syndrome, Davey had concerns about how her family would handle things and even her own expectations for Alice. “When you have children with Down syndrome, it becomes about them having Down syndrome,” she said. “They have a condition, it’s almost as if they don’t have a personality and she wasn’t Alice, she was Alice with Down syndrome.”
Davey explored various narratives about her relationship with her daughter, as well as her ideas of what her daughter might be experiencing, in the series “Looking for Alice,” shot on film with a medium-format camera. It is one of many projects in which she has immersed herself since deciding to follow a career as a photographer. (She is currently closing down her 15-year psychotherapy practice.)
“When we have a child who doesn’t have learning difficulties or Down syndrome, we all project on them that my child is going to be this or that, we immediately have expectations, but I wasn’t allowed any here, I was dealing with very different territory,” she said. “It’s a great exercise in looking at oneself and seeing what we do to our children and these expectations we have for them. As a psychotherapist I deal with the fallout of that all the time and it just illuminated and amplified my relationship with my other children.”
“What I found fascinating was once I got my thinking mind out of the way was the perception of photography as a medium of communication,” she said. “When the images came back it was extraordinary what was being shown to me and just by putting that intention out there, things were just showing themselves to me without me thinking.”
Davey said nearly all of the photos have been taken either inside their home or no more than a 10 minute drive away. Apart from watching the light, staying in the moment is her only parameter when shooting.
“I sit back and watch and I can kind of hear and see so I’m combining all my senses to what’s going on around me.”
They downward dog. They warrior pose. They most certainly chaturanga. These are the zenned-out men of yoga, brought to you by photographer Amy Goalen.
Goalen started a steady yoga practice in Los Angeles a few years ago, which subsequently inspired the Los Angeles-based artist to create a yoga photography series. While researching for the project, she came upon a realization: while there were plentiful images of women engaging in the practice, men were actually quite unrepresented. Hence “Inside the Warrior — the Masculine Side of Yoga” was born.
Goalen soon teamed up with writer and devoted yogi Julian DeVoe for the project; she took photos, he interviewed the subjects on their relationship to the ancient art. “I tell everyone ‘You don’t have to be 25 and ripped to be photographed by me,'” Goalen said to The Huffington Post. “I want to photograph men with a dedicated practice. Period.”
Working in both black-and-white and color, Goalen captures a variety of male subjects striking a (yoga) pose, their minds, bodies and spirits immortalized in a single moment of peaceful athleticism. You can watch the body assume shapes that border on surreal, stretching and bending like a work of human origami. Yet beyond the men’s bodies, Goalen captures something deeper, what she calls the “soul of a yogi,” the “depth of heart, sensitivity, courage, integrity, and a self-awareness that comes through.” Take a look for yourself in the photos below.
NEW YORK (AP) — Police say a drunken driver stopped his van and fell asleep at the wheel on a New York City highway in the middle of traffic.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police say other cars were maneuvering around the van when an officer found it around 2 p.m. Thursday. It was on Route 440 in Staten Island.
Police say there was an open beer can in the van’s cup holder.
The officer roused the snoozing driver and gave him sobriety tests. Police say the 39-year-old failed, and they soon found that that his license has been suspended some 27 times.
The Allentown, Pennsylvania, man was arrested on charges including driving while intoxicated.
UNIONTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Authorities say a woman being cited for public drunkenness in Pennsylvania accidentally dropped a baggie of crack cocaine on the police station floor.
Uniontown police say 23-year-old Savannah Turachak, of Lemont Furnace, was patted down for weapons but not otherwise searched when she was brought to the station Nov. 19. That’s because police were just citing and releasing her.
But police say Turachak returned moments later to report being harassed by someone and, in the process, fluffed her shirt to straighten it out — and the drugs fell out.
Surveillance video shows she tried to pick up the bag but instead left it when three other people walked in. Police found it a short time later and charged her.
Online court records don’t list an attorney for Turachak.
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